Doomed Cargo

by Ian Cannon

  “Hailing,” Tawny said. “Haven Crest, this is the crew of the privateer freighter REX on approach, return.”

  “We copy, REX,” a tired voice said. “Approach at one-one-two-four.”

  “Copy,” she said, and Ben corrected for the proper vector.

  The voice said, “Tell me you’re our replacement generators.”

  Ben scanned the docket, said, “Looks like it, Haven. We have two Sarzi Company chemical-fusion field-energy generators on our manifest. Guess someone’s taking requests.”

  “Perfect. Come around to docking node two. We’ll put you at the top of the rotation.”

  “Copy that.”

  REX glided over the station, dwarfed by its mass, and arced slowly to the planet side nodes. Number two was a universal hub servicing four other freighters simultaneously, each suspended from the node at perpendicular angles and attached by long telescoping umbilicus. It spun geosynchronous to the station like a big, four-spoke pinwheel with big, bulky cargo ships at the end of each spoke. Ben matched REX’s spin with the respective umbilicus as it extended out to meet them. Thud—they coupled up. Gas evacuated as their atmospheres joined, and they disembarked.

  They were greeted by Haven’s magistrate with two station security guards. He was tall and wore utility clothes—a brown vest, beige shirt, dark pants and boots with tools hanging off him—an uncommon look for a colony magistrate. Tawny and Ben both figured these people were constantly pulling double duty. Newcomers with vague knowledge of biology got temporarily assigned as colony physicians. Operation administrators doubled as security personnel. Magistrates often did time as repair team crewmen. It was life on a refugee colony—hard, busy, stressful.

  He said, “I’m Callan. Glad you’re here.” There were handshakes, introductions. Callan turned to one of his men. “Escort their vessel to the leeward cargo bays. See to their unloading personally.”

  “You got it,” the guy said, and went about his orders.

  Callan said, “You up for some fresh coffee?”

  Tawny and Ben switched a look. Ben said, “Sounds good.”

  “Okay. Follow me to operations. It’s right this way.” They moved down the corridor. People moved sparsely by. “Yeah,” Callan said, “our generators are going bad. Have been for a while. Some are down. We can’t hardly get shipments. Seriously limits the number of vessels we can house.”

  “I see,” Ben said.

  “And with the amount of refugee traffic we get, it’s getting worse.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  They moved passed an interior repair crew, each stepping around a flail of sparks as the crew torched together a damaged bulkhead. Unfazed, Callan said, “All over. Whoever can make it this far out. We’ve been seeing a lot of families from Iot and Zet. The Imperium’s getting punchy out that way. People are leaving.”

  “Hmm,” Ben said.

  “And the raids on Sarcon didn’t help.”

  Tawny nodded, glumly. Sarcon was the closest planet to her homeworld of Raylon. She knew Sarcon well. It hung big and wonderful in the Raylon skies. She used to stare up at its blue and blond face in wonderment as a child. She said, “Are they still raiding?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Planetary defenses shrugged them off, if eventually. But a few months of planetary strike bombing drove cities of people away. Seems like half of them came here. Supplies are low. More mouths to feed, bodies to house.”

  “Sounds rough,” Ben said.

  “Yeah, and then there’s systems down all over the station,” he said coming to a door. It slid half open. He looked back, gave them a told-you-so look and shoved the door open the rest of the way. “Last week it was our waste filtration stations. Week before that it was a breach in our med block. Had to shut down the whole wing. This week our comms are down.”

  “Your comms?” Ben said.

  “Yeah. All we got is local E.M. radio. Gain antennas are working fine, but the subwarps are all screwy.”

  “And the generators?”

  “Awe,” he groaned. “They’re always a problem. Old equipment. The solar batteries work fine, but the payload just isn’t enough. We got to resort to good old fuel engines. It’s an added cost, but it’s an added comfort, too. Well, when they work. We do what we can.” Callan added sadly, “Especially for the kids. They come in droves. Most of them have no one.”

  Tawny gave him an uneasy look. “Orphans?”

  “Yeah, mostly. At least they are by the time they get here. We try to make them comfortable. Our population is very transient. Most come and go. But not our kids. They don’t have anyone. They get stuck here. There’s never any time to develop relationships, friendships, whatever. It’s hard on them.”

  “How many?” Tawny asked.

  “Hard to say anymore. This place ultimately becomes their home. Half these people grew up here. As for the kids we got now, we got emplacements for them all over the station. Too many to house in one hub. The older ones that can work get absorbed, maybe jump on with a space crew, join a colonizing party, what have you. They fall off our docket.”

  “Sounds dangerous,” Tawny said.

  Callan stopped pacing, turned, looked at her. “Look around you.”

  She nodded with a miserable grimace. Callan turned, started leading again. She said, “What about the young ones?”

  “We keep them fed, keep them clothed. About all we can do.” He presented the place with a doleful gesture. It was a miserable place for anyone to call home, especially a child whose parents were dead. “The children—they’re the true victims of this damned war.”

  They continued through the station, moving through a series of passages, all connected by universal junctures and hatchways. There were smudgy viewports and dingy corridors that had been patched or replaced altogether at some point.

  They entered a long passageway with outer space all around them. No walls. No bulkheads. Just a bridgeway surrounded by stars and distance. It was dizzying. Tawny and Ben both stopped momentarily.

  Callan chuckled. “This is our space walk. It’s a membrane.” He reached up and touched it. Invisible ripples fluttered at his touch. They looked impressed. “This used to be a piece of a Golothan high-pro boat. They were gutting it a few years back. We needed a connector tunnel between the main hubs. We picked it up.” He smiled, proud of this tiny piece of his station. “I thought we were lucky to get it.”

  High-pro boat. High-profile. A luxury yacht.

  “Very nice,” Ben said.

  “Come on,” Callan said, and led them on.

  They entered the main operation center where traffic for the entire station was coordinated by a series of operators with headsets. They all wore informal, rough-necker clothes. Everything seemed sweaty. Station leads sharked around looking over shoulders. Holo-displays glowed in the room, some of them flickering with overuse.

  Callan said, “Right this way,” and started leading them toward the far end.

  Tawny stopped. They turned, looked at her. “I’m going to have a look around, if that’s okay,” she said.

  Ben gave her a curious glance.

  Callan shrugged. “Be my guest. You’ll be unloaded in about an hour. We’ll call.”

  “Okay.” She looked at Ben.

  Ben could see it on her face. He didn’t have to look hard. He knew where she was going. In some congested part of this beaten, ragtag refugee colony, her entire childhood waited for her, a personal history she hardly spoke of, though, from time to time, it screamed in the dark so only he could hear. He nodded to her with warm understanding. It was something she needed to do alone. He watched her sadly as she turned and left, headed for one of the orphanages.

  The orphanage looked like it had been an old social hub for a residential orbiting space station at one time, perhaps a gaming quarters or a sitting area. It was round, maybe eighty feet in diameter, had ten foot ceilings with overhead bulkheads. Light shone through louvers at the top. The walls were smeared with use. A seri
es of cots set at the perimeter indicated the children’s beds.

  She entered the place to the sound of quietly playing children. Her feet stopped at the threshold as if something in her was suddenly unable to continue forward. The kids were all here. It was a small operation, maybe a dozen children in all. She could tell which ones had been here a while, and which were new arrivals. The old veterans wore standard, loose-fitting children’s dungarees and bore a look of resignation in their eyes, as if they’d grown accustomed to the new home they’d been forced into after having had everything they’d ever known ripped away from them. The newcomers wore whatever clothes they arrived in and looked feral in a sedate, silent way, with their nerves drawn out like stretched wire. Adults hovered amongst them. Volunteers. Their eyes were warm and caring, but Tawny could see what was underneath. They were in a perpetual state of panic. How could they care for these kids properly? What would tomorrow bring? How would they feed them next week, next month? How could they ever show them a life of hope?

  The reality: This miserable little joint was as good as it would ever get for most of them. Maybe all.

  Tawny felt her eyes well up. Why had she come here? She’d spent the last twenty years of her life escaping places just like this. Now she was back. Why? What was she trying to remind herself of, and was discovering that thing worth it?

  She started to back away, but stopped, frozen again. There was a girl. She was a pathetic little thing—maybe the most pathetic little girl she’d ever seen—despite her perfect beauty. Hair dangled in her face, parting over a button chin, a turned up nose and pookie lips that half grinned, whispering sweet nothings to herself. She sat indian-style on the floor across the room toying with a makeshift dolly. Tawny tilted her head, eyeing her curiously. Her stomach tightened. The little thing beheld such perfect irony. She was consumed in the toy-thing in her hands, stroking its greasy hair, tilting it back and forth in her grimy little hands. Yet she seemed tragically content.

  Tawny couldn’t tell if she was one of the old veterans, or one of the newcomers. She girded herself taking a big breath, and moved forward until her shadow fell slowly over the little girl. Attention caught, the girl looked up revealing the skin-toned strata spots falling across her neck, behind her ears and across her hairline. She was unmistakably Sarcon. She was from Raylon’s closest neighbor. This girl might as well have been Tawny herself.

  Huge, curious, ocean-blue eyes twinkled in the stark light. They brightened as the girl gave her a broad smile.

  “Hi,” Tawny said.

  “Hi.”

  Tawny nudged her chin at the doll in her hands. It was a makeshift thing that someone had fashioned out of an old machine part and affixed hair-like material to. “I had one just like that when I was a little girl.”

  The girl brightened even more. “You did?”

  “I sure did.”

  The girl studied her for a second, and Tawny couldn’t help but feel the girl’s eyes dive into her deepest parts. It was unexplainable, but it drew her closer in some strange way. The girl grinned, said, “Was her name Leema?”

  Tawny twitched at that. She couldn’t remember what her doll’s name had been. That was a lifetime ago. It felt a hundred years away. Yet that word seemed so familiar. It was an old word, suddenly made new.

  Leema.

  It jerked a memory from her as though that little girl’s grasp had reached into her and pulled up her doll’s name from a shadowy past.

  Leena.

  Tawny gave her a bewildered look and said, “No. Her name was Lee—na.”

  With an ‘N’.

  But good guess, little girl!

  The girl nodded, said, “Oh, okay.”

  Reflecting back on a past that seemed suddenly much closer than ever before, Tawny said, “I used to play with her every day.”

  “She was your best friend,” the girl said. It wasn’t a question. It was more like … an observation.

  Tawny said, “Yes, that’s right. She used to sleep on my pillow.”

  The girl looked back up. “You shared dreams, too?”

  Tawny frowned in thought. In many ways they had, both dreaming of the day they’d leave the orphanage, find a family, become a part of something greater than themselves. “Yeah, I guess we did,” Tawny said.

  The girl squinted an eye, thinking. “Are you deliverer?”

  Deliverer. Cargo hauler. She nodded, “I’m a cargo hauler.”

  “Your dream came true then, I guess.”

  Tawny snuffled at her, impressed.

  The girl looked back at her dolly, said, “I knew you were deliverer.”

  “How did you know?”

  She shrugged her tiny shoulders. “I don’t know. Guess your eyes say so.”

  Tawny kneeled down to gain her eye line. “My eyes?”

  “Uh-huh.” She glanced at Tawny. “And your clothes. You have hauler clothes.”

  She looked down, back up. “Oh, right.” She laughed.

  “And you’re an orphan, like me,” the girl said nonchalantly, as if her words carried no revelation, no weight.

  Yet Tawny’s breath caught in her throat. An orphan. She asked, deeply curious, “Why do you say that?”

  “You walked over here, didn’tcha?”

  Tawny gawked at her bewildered. How had she meant that—walked over from the other side of the room? Walked over from the other side of the station? Or perhaps, had she been walking over here her whole life?

  It didn’t matter. In the end, the answer was the same. “Yes, you’re right. I am an orphan. Just like you.”

  Her hands stopped gesticulating over the dolly. She whispered quietly, “You’re mommy and daddy died, too?”

  Tawny drew her lips tight, felt a surge of remorse rise, said, “Yes, they did.”

  The girl looked up, squinting that eye again. “You don’t remember them?”

  How did this girl … how did she …?

  “No, I don’t remember them. How do you know that?”

  She shrugged, started stroking her dolly. “Just do, I guess.”

  “Do you remember your parents?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “You miss them, don’t you?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “I’m very sorry you lost them.”

  The girl gnawed on her lips still messing with the doll in her hands.

  Tawny slid down on her butt, sat next to her. “Everything’s going to change,” she said reassuringly. “All this,” she gestured to the orphanage, “it’ll all be just a memory for you one day. And that’s all.”

  Without looking up, the girl muttered in her tiny orphan voice, “Nothing ends the way we think it will, does it? My daddy said to me that.”

  Tawny marveled at her momentarily before saying, “That’s right. But it does end.”

  The girl looked up at her, eyes starting to glisten. “You promise?”

  “Yes, I do,” Tawny said fighting like hell against the idea of false hope, of lies.

  The girl nodded her head, said, “I know. Everything changes. Sometimes for the good. Sometimes for the bad. But everything changes.”

  “You’re a smart girl, you know that?” Tawny said.

  She tilted her head as if to show modesty. “Just a girl, though.”

  “What’s your name?”

  The girl gazed up at her quickly, playfully, and said, “Guess.”

  “You want me to guess your name?”

  She nodded vigorously.

  It was a game. It made Tawny smile. She played along. “Okay. Mmm. Uh. Rae?”

  The girl chuckled delightfully. “No.”

  “Tadra?”

  “Nope.”

  Tawny crooked her lips. “Trina.”

  She shook her head. “Nuh-uh.”

  “Okay, tell me,” Tawny said.

  “My name’s Sireela.”

  Tawny’s eyebrows went up in discovery. “Sireela. That’s a very beautiful name.”

  The girl held up her dolly and as
ked, “What’s her name?”

  Tawny plucked it from her little hand and looked into it, said, “Hmm—I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

  The girl gave her a severely perplexed look. “Because I don’t know what her name is.”

  “Oh!” Tawny gave a big laugh. This wasn’t a game like before. She said, “Hmm—how about Rae?”

  The girl nodded agreeably. “Like sun ray.”

  “Yeah, just like that.”

  “That’s a pretty name, too.” She took the dolly back, started rubbing her hair. “Rae. Yeah. That’s your…” her words trailed off and she looked up at Tawny with doughy eyes. “You have to go now?”

  Tawny said, “No, I—”

  The station’s intercom came over, “Vessel one, primary loading bay, you’re clear for departure.”

  Tawny flinched. That was REX. He was ready for departure. She looked at her new, little friend and said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “That’s okay,” the girl said. “You’ll come back, though.”

  “I hope so.” Tawny stood up and gave her a final, warm look, then brushed the dolly’s hair. “Goodbye, Rae,” she said.

  The girl pivoted the dolly’s little arm up and down like a goodbye wave.

  “Goodbye, Sireela,” Tawny said. “It was good to meet you.”

  “You too, Tawny. Bye bye.”

  Hiding the fact that her heart was ripping out of her chest, Tawny made an about face and strolled to the exit with her mind spinning on her new friend. What an impressive child. So smart. So wise. Beyond her years.

  She even knew my …

  Wait!

  Tawny turned around.

  Sireela sat looking down at her dolly, Rae, talking sweet, childish nothings to her. That sense of tragic peace had washed back over the little girl, so, deciding not to extend her welcome any more than she had, Tawny sank privately through the exit and left.

  “Detaching,” Ben called, and pulled the release lever overhead. The detach system thudded and they loosed.

  “Thanks for the delivery, Captain,” Callan said over the comm. “Come back again.”

  “You bet, Haven. Good luck.” He guided REX into an about face and kicked on the retrogrades. They pivoted away from the station colony and watched it slide away, framed by that enormous, breathing planet.